The Issues and the Adversaries 395
Seldom did business men take any initiative in bringing on revolution. Very
commonly they accepted it, benefited from it, and supported it once it was an ac-
complished fact. The Revolutionary changes, in France and in the sister- republics,
as later under the Napoleonic empire, had much to offer the most active commer-
cial interests. The dissolution of gilds, while damaging to small or traditional or
purely local activities, favored the manufacturers of new products and those seek-
ing to operate in a market of national or international scope. It was useful to get
rid of provincial tariffs, and river and road tolls, and to replace the endless archaic
peculiarities of boroughs and towns with a more uniform plan of municipal gov-
ernment. It was useful to have uniform and easily calculable weights and measures,
and a sound decimal currency which after 1796 was free from paper inflation. Law
courts, legal definitions, and legal proceedings had advantages for business over
those of former regimes. Former church lands could be, and were, bought up by
business men, in Belgium and northern Italy as in France. Land thus acquired
could be used to raise capital for productive investment through new laws of mort-
gage loans. In the eyes of the law, commercial men of variant religion were no
longer social deviates, and well- to- do merchants or bankers were in theory the
social equals of former aristocrats. In addition, many merchants, contractors, and
bankers profited from the immediate situation, through services of supply to the
French armies during the war.
In the United States, thanks to peculiarities of its history, the division of opin-
ion on the French Revolution, while very heated, followed somewhat different
lines. The United States was a new country, only a few generations removed from
the original settlement. It had no real problem of feudal survivals or of ecclesiasti-
cal power. Its people had never been brought, like those of various European coun-
tries, to accept subordination to a central or national government. It already had
more “equality,” and more “liberty,” than any part of Europe. Though not back-
ward, it was economically undeveloped, compared to England or Holland or many
parts of France. Towns were very small compared to those of Europe. Most people
lived in the country. Landownership was widespread, and there was only one kind
of landed property. Some owned more, some less, and some none; but such differ-
ences were quantitative, not qualitative: there were no lords, manors, or seigneurial
encumbrances on the plain farmer’s land, except to a certain degree in New York.
On the whole, therefore, and allowing for qualifications and anomalies, a para-
doxical situation existed when comparison is made to Europe. The most outspo-
kenly pro- French, or democratically minded persons, were to be found among
Southern landed gentry and the more remote farmers living toward the Western
frontier, the very kinds of people who in Europe were the least attracted to the
Revolution. The most outspokenly anti- French, and least cordial to self- consciously
democratic movements, were likely to be found among the business interests of
the seaboard towns, or the settled New England farmers living relatively close to
the main channels of trade, the very kinds of people who in Europe were likely to
regard the Revolution with favor, or to be involved in it themselves.
The truth seems to be that the “democrats” in America were conservative in terms
of the American scene, however responsive to the revolutionary movement in Eu-
rope, wanting to preserve the simpler equalities of an earlier day, the agrarian self-